This article is about international women’s fashion magazines―specifically Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire and Vogue―and the part they play in creating and sustaining the fashion industry as a system of magic. That it is indeed a system may be seen in the fact that, as with other systems of magic, the fashion industry makes use of magicians, magical rites, and magical representations.

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The Impact of the Global Economic and Financial Crises over Developing Countries' Automobile Industry

Wad, Peter(Frederiksberg, 2010)

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In the Global South automobile production evolved behind protectionist walls and was promoted by infant industry policies and outright national automotive projects from the 1950s. In recent decades, many developing countries have liberalized their automotive markets and allowed automobile TNCs to take majority control over joint ventures, transforming domestic automotive industries into foreign controlled sectors while leaving a few national automakers in India, Malaysia and China. Decomposing and reorganizing the national value chain into regional and global automobile value chains OEMs and TNC original equipment suppliers (OESs) have off-shored and outsourced component and parts production to developing countries. Again, local auto suppliers have been acquired or relegated to lower 'tier' positions if not forced out of the market. However, with economic growth and development in the Global South during the 1990s and 2000s automobile sales have boomed, and the automobile sectors in Latin America and Asia have become „brown sunrise‟ industries generating investment, technological upgrading and employment. The present global financial and economic crisis has not profoundly changed this trajectory. The global crisis did not impact automotive markets in developing countries severely, except for automotive exporting countries like Mexico, Thailand and South Africa. Only in 2009 automotive sales and production declined across the board in the Global South, but key markets turned around in the end of the year. Thus, the automobile crisis is a downward business cycle, not a structural crisis of the industry. Companies in the automotive industry responded with traditional crisis management (temporary downsizing, cost reductions, retraining, consolidation, innovation), and governments launched traditional stimuli packages (cash-for-clunkers, tax reductions on smaller and/or cleaner cars etc). Strategic initiatives were taken to improve the competitiveness of the domestic industry (consolidation, liberalization) on the one hand and to transform it from a brown industry to a „greener‟ industry on the other hand (tightening environmental regulations, fuel efficiency and emission standards, subsidizing purchases of smaller and „greener‟ cars, investing in appropriate infrastructure and green technology R&D). Thereby, some developing countries and their surviving local automakers and parts makers are leapfrogging into „clean‟ technology frontiers competing head-to-head with global automakers or partnering with foreign firms in their common endeavor to manufacture green automobiles.

The aim of this paper is conceptualize and illustrate how large-scale data and algorithms condition and reshape knowledge production when addressing international development challenges. Based on a review of relevant literature on the uses of big data in the context of development, we unpack how digital traces from cell phone data, social media data or data from internet searches are used as sources of knowledge in this area. We draw on insights from governmentality studies and argue that big data’s impact on how relevant development problems are governed revolves around (1) new techniques of visualizing development issues, (2) a reliance on algorithmic operations that synthesize large-scale data, (3) and novel ways of rationalizing the knowledge claims that underlie development efforts. Our discussion shows that the reliance on big data challenges some aspects of traditional ways to collect and analyze data for development (e.g. via household surveys and deductive approaches), and we articulate intersections between different kinds of knowledge production, different ways of collecting and controlling data, and different epistemic foundations for addressing and governing development problems.

This article discusses the social processes among members of a panel of jurors required to award a major prize to one of the submissions to a national ceramics exhibition in Japan. Uniquely based on participant observation-style fieldwork, the article details the voting procedures and (inconclusive) results, before analysing why one particular potter’s submission was selected for the Princess Chichibu Cup. It shows how social relations, rather than aesthetic taste, influenced the final choice, since jury members operated according to an informal pecking order that depended on pre-existing networks and reputations, themselves determined by seniority and age. The fact that judges did not overtly resort to aesthetic criteria when making their evaluations meant that they considered each submission in relation to other submissions, rather than on their own particular merits. They thus ended up comparing ‘incommensurate flaws’, rather than making a selection according to agreed ‘merit’. And yet ‘meritocratic principles’ seem to prevail in the longer term cumulative recognition of potters who are awarded prizes at such exhibitions.

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Interdisciplinarity is in the DNA of the iSchools. This workshop invites you to discuss how inter-disciplinarity plays out in theory and practice. The workshop addresses the uniqueness of the iSchools, provides an interactive framework to discuss and reflect on interdisciplinary practice. It suggests some models and tools to describe relations between disciplines, while offering a venue to brainstorm and envision issues of interest with like-minded colleagues. The purpose of this workshop is to establish a setting for continuous dialogue among colleagues on how interdisciplinarity plays out in practice. The workshop aims to create a forum for reflection on local inter-disciplinary practice(s) and to consider the possibilities of forming research networks. The workshop opens with a panel presentation from iSchool deans and senior faculty discussing current interdisciplinarity practices in iSchools and with presentations that address theoretical frameworks of interdisciplinarity. These presentations will form the basis for small group discussions in the afternoon.

Our study explores cultural cognition in comparative U.S. – Japan employment relations through interdisciplinary analysis of Japanese Supreme Court regulation of the post-World War II lifetime employment system and the latest data available on Japan's collective bargaining-based approach to employee participation in managerial prerogative. The comparative social policy aim is to examine and account for observed employment relations variance in the U.S. and Japan, given their similar labor legislation. Japan’s Supreme Court recognizes lifetime employment as an institutionalized practice and we report all 236 references to the term “lifetime employment” in Japanese case law: 178 regional cases, 43 regional superior cases, and 15 Supreme Court cases. Quantitative analysis of Supreme Court cases contextualizes these references in post-World War II history; qualitative analysis focuses on the Court's discourse. Causally related to this recognition, management councils (a form of employee participation in managerial prerogative) are also a defining feature of Japanese employment relations at the enterprise level. Despite unionization rate declines in both nations, the persistence of Japan's participatory employee relations system contrasts sharply with recent U.S. state-based legislative assaults on long-standing collective bargaining, particularly for public sector unions. The concept of cultural cognition, recently deployed in legal studies to account for domestic U.S. risk, public policy and voting preferences, offers theoretical grounds for better understanding of the observed comparative variance in employment practices. We conclude with proposals for organized labor in the U.S. to strengthen prospects for informal network proliferation and employee participation, with the goal of enhancing national competitiveness.

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The paper explores how locals span boundaries between corporate and local levels. The aim is to better comprehend potentialities and challenges when MNCs draws on locals’ culture specific knowledge. The study is based on an in-depth, interpretive case study of boundary spanning by local actors in the period of post-acquisition when their organization is being integrated into the acquiring MNC. The paper contributes to the literature on boundary spanning in three ways: First, by illustrating that boundary spanning is performed by numerous organizational actors in a variety of positions in MNCs, inclusively by locals in subsidiaries. Second, by showing that boundary spanning is ‘situated’ in the sense that its result depends on the kind of knowledge to be transmitted and the attitude of the receivers. A third contribution is methodological. The study illustrates that combining bottom-up grounded approach with pattern matching is a way to shed light on the tacit local knowledge that organizational actors cannot articulate and that an exclusively inductive research is not likely to unveil.

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This is a participant-observer report concerning curriculum deployment of Bernard J.F. Lonergan’s insight-based critical realism and general empirical method for interdisciplinary research methods and allied courses in Copenhagen Business School (CBS, Denmark), from 2001 to the present. I also report similar instruction in interdisciplinary methods for management and organization studies at the International School for Social and Business Studies (ISSB, Slovenia) in 2012.1 The overall time period has been entirely under the aegis of the Bologna Process, begun in 1999, and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), launched in March, 2010.
Both the originating Bologna Process and subsequent EHEA envision curriculum development appropriate to “ensure that the European higher education system acquires a world-wide degree of attraction” (European Commission, 2013). In addition, the Bologna Process calls for specification of the “necessary European dimensions of higher education” (Ibid.). The point of this working paper is to report teaching success and indicate potential merits of Lonergan’s general empirical method, grounded in insight-based critical realism, as a robust epistemological basis for EHEA university curriculum and instruction. The design approach to Lonergan’s method offers grounds to think it uniquely adapted for interdisciplinary social science in the complex trans-cultural, multi-lingual, and religiously pluralist EHEA, thus providing curriculum content adequate and appropriate for the “necessary European dimensions of higher education.

This is an exploration, using Japanese language primary sources, of management policies and relat-ed industrial sector ecology of the post-World War II machine tools industry. From postwar devas-tation to global leader in worldwide market share by the mid-1980s, remarkably little is know of the factors that contributed to this sucess. Paralleling Max Holland’s 1989 Burgmaster case study method of the U.S. firm’s and industry failure, this study examines the history of Okuma Corpora-tion, an Aichi Prefecture machine tools producer. The role of management leaders and government support for viable firms is shown to provide the necessary industrial ecology for machine tools pro-ducers to recover, innovate, deal with successive oil shocks, and achieve a leadership role in the machine tools sector. Comparative reflections on the parallel decline of the U.S. machine tools in-dustrial sector conclude the paper.

In recent years, new digital media have become important for social networking and content sharing. Due to their large diffusion, social media platforms have also both increased the strategic importance of managing corporate reputation and rendered this more difficult. Companies are increasingly apprehensive about information and opinions that can spread through online communities rapidly without any control. While social media platforms increase the power of stakeholders, they also represent a large-scale source of information about feelings, opinions and sentiments of people that allow us to measure and monitor reputation through the analysis of user generated content in real-time. In this paper, we show how social media content can be used to measure the online reputation of a company. Furthermore, we present an open platform that uses a sentiment analysis algorithm on twitter traffic to monitor the real time evolution of company reputation.

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A Revision of Hofstede's Theory of Industrialization Supported by Cases from Latin America, Africa and Germany in the 19th century

Kragh, Simon Ulrik(Frederiksberg, 2014)

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Drawing on a revised version ofHofstede's theory ofindustrialization and cultural change contained in his explanation of individualism and collectivism, the paper proposes that countries which are in the earlier stages of industrialization have a common culture that governs organizational behaviours. In-group/out-group particularist values that have been handed over from preindustrial society tend to overlay and replace impersonal and universalistic bureaucracies and market exchange typical ofindustrial society. The paper shows how these values shape the culture of organizations in Latin America, Africa and Germany around 1850.

We
engage
a
discussion
of
political
CSR
in
SMEs
in
an
African
context.
Based
on
critical
observations
on
Western
MNC
action
in
emerging
economies,
political
economists
have
argued
that
business
profit
far
more
than
society
from
CSR.
In
this
paper
we
argue
that
the
imperative
for
growth
in
developing
economies
provide
an
option
to
consider
the
scope
and
potential
of
SME
engagement
for
local
social
development.
Interestingly,
while
African
business
is
not
usually
compared
to
nor
found
to
share
much
similarity
with
European
business
practices,
our
empirical
studies
of
CSR
in
African
SMEs
reveal
a
number
of
shared
characteristics
with
their
European
counterparts.
Supported
by
prior
studies
on
European
SMEs
and
our
empirical
findings
from
Africa,
we
conceptualize
how
CSR
in
SMEs
in
both
regions
first
and
foremost
tends
to
be
strongly
focused
on
the
”proximity
factors”
of
employees
and
local
society.
We
discuss
how
the
SME
propensity
to
prioritize
proximity
factors
(feelings
of
importance
of
nearness)
in
CSR
decision-­‐
making
in
SMEs
has
different
implications
in
an
African
than
a
European
context.
Future
research
paths
are
proposed
to
explore
political
CSR
in
SMEs
in
a
developing
economy
context.

Extractive foreign direct investment (FDI) is heralded as the new development opportunity in Africa. But extractive FDI has a record of producing enclaves in host countries with few linkages to the local economy. Only if it creates local content will extractive FDI become a catalyst of development. This paper analyses the trajectories of local content policies and practices in three African countries – Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique. We argue that we cannot understand the dynamics and outcomes of local content policies in African extractives without understanding how local content has become ingrained in ruling coalitions’ rent-seeking and maintenance activities in the three countries. We discuss the consequences of evolving local content practices for political patronage.

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Investigating formal and informal CSR practices and the views of managers and workers in SME garment companies in South Africa

Jeppesen, Søren; Kothuis, Bas(Frederiksberg, 2014)

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The article seeks to contribute to the SMEs and CSR literature in developing countries by providing; a) a ‘Southern’ SME perspective, which includes the voices of managers and workers, b) a perspective of CSR, which opens up to informal CSR practices that SMEs undertake, and c) an analysis of the key institutional issues affecting the CSR practices of SMEs. It presents perceptions of CSR practices among 21 SMEs in the garment industry in South Africa, based on 40 interviews with managers and 19 interviews with workers through the use of qualitative and quantitative interview frameworks. It highlights a high degree of similarities between managers and workers, though knowledge of (cognitive level) the concept ‘CSR’ differ considerably. Informal practices are widespread and of key importance to the SMEs, expressed by managers and workers alike. History, industry and manager-workers relations are found to be important factors in explaining the CSR perceptions and level of practices. It is suggested that future research investigate the role of informal practices further and explore the role of institutional theory.

The current fashion system is highly unsustainable, as continuous overproduction and overconsumption
is contributing to environmental as well as social degradation. The aim of the
study is to investigate the relationship between consumers’ perceived responsibility for the
non-sustainability of the fashion industry, diffusion of responsibility between different actors,
label knowledge and use, perceived external barriers and environmental apparel consumption.
Theoretically, we combine the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability-Model with norm activation
theory. We use a representative sample of young Swedish consumers for our analysis.
Findings show that perceived personal responsibility as well as label knowledge and use enhance
environmental apparel consumption. The small but significant negative effect of perceived
responsibility diffusion on environmental apparel consumption indicates that responsibilities
between relevant actors might have to be delegated more explicitly than it happens
today.

During the Copenhagen Fashion Week A/W 2010, CPH Kids opened as the first independent trade
fair for children’s clothing. Despite considerable resistance, the fair managed to establish itself and
challenge the established order by providing a venue devoted fully to children’s clothing and luring
away exhibitors and visitors looking for change. In this paper, we analyze the dynamic
development and distinctive traits of the children’s clothing sector symbolized at the new fair.
Our study contributes to inquiry into the role of fairs and festivals in the creative industries by
examining the special case of coinciding, competing trade fairs. We introduce and build on three
closely related, but in our view complementary, concepts applied and developed in analyses of
festivals, trade shows and other kinds of temporary, usually competitive events, namely
tournament rituals, field configuring events and tournaments of value. We establish the common
ground of the three approaches, particular their assertion of the rich research potential and vital
significance of festivals, fairs and similar events for many fields, whether deemed creative or not.
We also single out particular strengths of each approach, which inform our inquiry....

This paper examines the factors that drive the success of multinational corporations (MNCs) in their pursuit of regional strategies. We develop a comprehensive regional success factor model to investigate the effects of regional management autonomy and regional product/service adaption on the regional success of MNCs. Using structural equation modelling, we also analyze the interaction effects of regional orientation and inter-regional distance. We evaluate our model by means of both primary and secondary data for Fortune Gloval 500 firms. Our findings show that appropriate degrees of regional management autonomy and regional product/service adaption are higly contingent upon contextual influences on MNCs.